Buying in any auction either on or offline can be an exciting experience. You see an item that you are interested in and you make a bid. But then someone else bids and you are no longer the high bid. Well, your bid was a bit low anyway so you might as well raise it a little and get control because there are only a few minutes to the end of the auction.

And so up and up go the bids until the end of the auction arrives. One of two things will have happened, you will either have won the item and paid way over the odds or you will breath a sigh of relief as someone else has the winning bid.

As sellers we love two or three people to be interested in our item and bid against each other. That is how items reach two or three times the amount we expected but as a buyer it can leave us a bit flat and not a little poorer.

There is absolutely no reason why this should happen to you. Bidding in the last few minutes of an auction can become frenzied and it is not the place for value for money seekers like us to be. And the good news is that we do not have to be.

These days I make all my bids by Proxy. It is very simple and straightforward and you will often pick up a bargain. What you do is decide what is the maximum price you are prepared to pay for any item. And this is a decision you make ideally a few hours before the end of the auction although you can bid as soon as the item is listed if you wish. Personally I do not like to attract too much attention to an auction by bidding early if I can avoid it. But sometimes it can be necessary if I am going to be away from a computer for a while.

Once you have decided on the amount you are prepared to pay enter that as your bid.

Now do not worry all that will happen is that your bid will be recorded at the level of the next bid increment. For example if the current bid was 99c and you were prepared to pay £3 the actual bid would be for just $1.04 a 5c increase on the previous bid. If someone else then bid yours would increase until someone bids more than your maximum bid.

In my experience I find that by using proxy bids I get about 50% of the items I bid on and often for much less than my maximum amount. One useful tip that I can give you is to never make your maximum bid a round number. For instance if you think $10 is about right bid $10.11 or even $10.51 because a lot of people will quit bidding when the item reaches a significant amount such as $10, $50 or $100 and those few extra can swing the auction in your favour.

Once you have placed your proxy bid you can just forget about it until the auction is over and then just check your e-mail for the congratulations or "the you have been outbid" message. Either way you can be sure that you have not paid over the odds for an eBay purchase.